Turn pride in Asian culture into capital for your brand

In 2013, look out for the rise of culture as capital for Asian consumers who are looking for a modern way to celebrate the rise of Asia on the world stage. 

We’re not talking classic souvenirs here, rather modern updates, remakes, postmodern mashups and expressions of national heritage and culture, including symbols, objects, traditions and even national heroes. 

This is the Asian era: We are amidst the most exciting and fast-paced decade of growth and development in Asia. Rapid-growth markets in Asia-Pacific will see their share of global consumption rise from 14 per cent in 2010, to 25 per cent by 2020, according to Ernst & Young. Given that, what better way to embrace and celebrate this current upward swing than through tailored Asian products and design?

Cultural capital is less in your face, making it soft power for a country and national brand to gain awareness, traction, likeability and word-of-mouth spread. PSY’s Gangnam Style was the first YouTube video in the world to hit over one billion views. Think of what it has done for Korean awareness and clout globally.

Insane levels of choice are being delivered to Asian consumers at an unbelievable pace and volume from every corner of the region and globe. That is only making them eager and expectant for even more. This is also Asia’s most try-out prone generation, exposed to a variety of experiences and choices their parents never had. So repackaging culture into the new, exciting, and quirky makes sense for them.

Here are four ideas to help you turn culture into capital for your brand:

1. Fusion and postmodern mashups

Asian consumers come from increasingly multicultural backgrounds and ethnicities. They’re also travelling more and accessing more of global culture online. This is making them a fusion of East and West, from their outlook to their personal style. Why not reflect their multicultural mashup in your product design? In Singaporean fashion label Ong Shunmugam’s 2013 collection, Prints Charming, each piece is a fusion of elements taken from Malay, Chinese and Indian local cultures, which reflects the mixed heritage of the designer, as well as her rapidly growing consumer base.

2. Cultural chic

Redesign everyday cultural objects and cuisine into beautifully packaged and crafted luxury and limited editions. Royal Blue Tea Company’s Masa Super Premium is an infused macha or green tea from Japan. Packaged like fine wine in engraved wooden boxes, only 36 bottles are made per year and they retail at US$2,270 each.

If you are an existing luxury brand, embed cultural symbols, motifs and traditional or artisan craftsmanship techniques into your collections to cater for wealthy consumers who want to celebrate local culture, rather than simply look abroad. Guo Pei is one of China’s most buzzed about designers, famous for her extravagant Chinese fashion collections and fashion show sets. Her October 2012 show was based on the Legend of the Dragon, with models wearing opulent handcrafted dresses covered in minute embroidery, crystal details and bold embellishments, including golden figures of mythological dragons.

3. Risqué Redo

Asian consumers today are looking for 'maturialism': more mature, quirkier, and more risqué products to satisfy their try-out prone nature. Hong-Kong based Goods of Desire catered to this need by creating a set of eight “mooning” mooncakes for the Mooncake Festival last year. The inspiration came from the play on words in Cantonese, where the phrase “15th day of the 8th month” also means “buttocks.” Each mooncake was a different buttock-shaped design accompanied by a humorous name like “Full Monty” and “Mind the Gap.” (See the last image in this photo gallery.) 

4. National heroes

The face(s) of your brand can become long-term objects of national status and pride. So find out the cultural zeitgeist of the time and your audience and choose someone who fits that more than your brand image and history. Last year, Taiwanese-American NBA player Jeremy Lin took the New York Knicks to sudden victory, creating 'Linsanity' (a period of Taiwanese national pride). In just one week there was a 3,000 per cent increase of traffic to the Knicks online store, and according to Forbes, Lin became the world’s fastest growing athlete brand, valued at US$14 million In February this year, major publications including The Atlantic, the New York Post and ESPN celebrated Linsanity’s one-year anniversary, while on Kickstarter, fans launched a project for a Lin documentary that has already been overfunded.

If you’re an Asian brand or a multinational brand in Asia, it’s time to jump on the ‘celebration nation’ trend, and give local consumers the opportunity to celebrate the boom time in the region.

Trendwatching.com bills itself as "an opinionated trend firm that scans the globe for the most promising consumer trends, insights and related hands-on business ideas". This column is adapted from the company's forthcoming Asia-Pacific Regional Trend Report, available for download starting tomorrow.